AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out Navi is here and we finally have competition in the graphics card market again. When we reviewed the Radeon RX 5700 XT (see it on Newegg), it was clear then that AMD wasn’t out to beat Nvidia in sheer performance but instead by offering an outstanding value for the dollars spent. That appears to be the company’s goal again with the Radeon RX 5500 XT, a budget-oriented card for gamers playing at 1080p. Coming in at $199 for the 8GB version and $169 for the 4GB version, it’s the most affordable RX 5000 card yet, but does it offer the performance boost to warrant an upgrade?

Design and Features

Unlike the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT, there’s no reference version of the RX 5500 XT being sold by AMD itself. That means gamers have their choice of stock models, factory overclocks, and cooling solutions thanks to the plentiful array of choices from add-in board partners (AIBs). It’s a welcome change from the typical months-long delay we’ve seen from both Team Red and Team Green in the past. The Radeon RX 5500 XT is the third Navi card to hit the market. Like the RX 5700 and 5700 XT, it’s made on the 7nm process, which offers major benefits to power efficiency and performance compared to last generation’s Polaris GPUs. The 5500 XT uses the Navi 14 chip, which is just under 40% smaller than the Navi 10 chip used in the 5700 series. It features 1408 GPU cores and a Base Clock speed of 1607 MHz. Under load, it can spin itself up to 1845 MHz for added performance. It’s available in two memory configurations, 4GB and 8GB GDDR6, the former of which comes in a bit cheaper at $169 versus $199; but with VRAM-hungry games becoming more and more common, it’s worth spending a bit extra for the added 4GB of memory. With a 128-bit bus and a speed of 14 Gb/s, it’s able to process at a rate of 224 Gb/s. As you might imagine with these more modest specs compared to the other cards in the chart above, it sips power with a TDP of only 130w. We completed our testing with the ASRock Challenger version of the card, which joins most others being released with a slight factory overclock. Our version features a slightly enhanced base clock of 1685 MHz and an expected “game clock” of 1737 MHz over the reference spec of 1717 MHz. These are modest overclocks (as is usually the case for any overclocking with Navi) and shouldn’t have any major impact on performance. When it comes to display support, the 5500 XT we tested features three DisplayPort 1.4 connections and a single HDMI 2.0b output, though this could vary between models. These outputs allow for high bandwidth connections and open the door to HDR and high resolution, high refresh rate displays (not that this card is a good fit for that in performance). The GPU supports up to 8K video output and AMD Eyefinity for multi-display support. Compared to the 5700 XT, the 5500 XT is a substantially cut back graphics card. AMD’s product page describes the card as capable of “up to” 60 FPS in AAA games and 90 FPS in eSports. The footnotes go on to explain that these figures were taken from Borderlands 3 and Rocket League on High settings, neither of which is the most demanding visually. If the trimmed down hardware weren’t enough, descriptions like that clearly position the 5500 XT as an entry-level Navi gaming card. As a Navi card, the 5500 XT brings with it the same suite of features we found on the 5700 series. Anti-Lag is a competitive favorite as it reduces input lag by synchronizing the processing of the CPU and GPU. Radeon Image Sharpening (RIS) is also available to provide an enhanced image by intelligently applying image sharpening only to areas of the image that need it. With its introduction in the 5700 series, I was impressed to see that it elevated 1440p gaming almost to the level of 4K. The same is true here, though to a lesser degree. Still, 1080p with RIS looks crisper than standard 1080p any day of the week.

Performance

To test the performance of the card, I ran it through our stable of test games. Each game was set to the ultra presets or highest settings where that wasn’t possible and anti-aliasing was disabled. We are currently in the process of updating our test bench, so the 5500 XT, GTX 1660, and Radeon RX 590 were each tested in my personal system. It is currently running a Ryzen R7 3900X and 32GB of 3600MHz of G.Skill TridentZ Neo memory and free of any bottlenecks that would hinder performance. Looking at the results, it’s clear that the cut-down in cores limit the 5500 XT to 1080p unless you’re comfortable gaming under 60 FPS. Even then, the card frequently hovered between 45 and 50 FPS on a number of our comparison titles. Bumping up to 1440p offers gameplay that’s still playable but that is no longer as smooth. If you’re building your first gaming PC, however, it’s worth remembering that many console titles also play in this range, especially when set to favor visuals over frame rate. At 4K, however, things fall apart, as we would expect from a card in this price range. ASRock’s dual-fan cooling solution worked well throughout my testing. I ran my tests in the Corsair Crystal Series 680X RGB case outfitted with eight Corsair LL120 fans for exceptional airflow. Even after more than an hour of solid gaming, I recorded a peak temperature of 66C. Again, this will vary depending on your manufacturer but I was impressed at the thermal performance. What’s especially notable here is that the 5500 XT is frequently beaten by last generation’s RX 590. If you’re an optimist, you could look at this positively: you’re getting most of the performance of last generation’s top Radeon card in entry-level Navi. The problem is that the two cards are currently priced identically. Likewise, AMD recently rolled out Radeon Image Sharpening to the RX 590, which means even that benefit isn’t exclusive to this generation. If you’re concerned with sheer FPS for smooth gameplay, the RX 5500 XT falls short. Nvidia’s main competitor to the RX 5500 XT, the GTX 1660, wins in all but a single case that could be chalked up to margin of error. Since the GTX 1660 has been out for a while, it can be had for less than $5 more at the time of this writing, though requires the trade-off of 2GB less VRAM. For only $30 more, the GTX 1660 SUPER promises even bigger performance gains, though I didn’t have one on-hand to test myself for this review.

Purchasing Guide

The AsRock version of the Radeon RX 5500 XT we tested is available for $199. There's also a 4GB VRAM variant of this card is also available for $169. [poilib element="commerceCta" json="%7B%22image%22%3A%7B%22url%22%3A%22https%3A%2F%2Fassets1.ignimgs.com%2F2020%2F01%2F16%2FAsRockRadeon-RX-5500-XT-Challenger1579235395590.jpg%22%2C%22styleUrl%22%3A%22https%3A%2F%2Fassets1.ignimgs.com%2F2020%2F01%2F16%2FAsRockRadeon-RX-5500-XT-Challenger1579235395590_%7Bsize%7D.jpg%22%2C%22id%22%3A%225e213847e4b0e6d43845e0cc%22%7D%2C%22url%22%3A%22http%3A%2F%2Fr.zdbb.net%2Fu%2Fblm4%22%2C%22title%22%3A%22AsRock%20Radeon%20RX%205500%20XT%20Challenger%22%2C%22store%22%3A%22Newegg%22%2C%22additionalInfo%22%3A%22%22%2C%22ourPick%22%3Afalse%7D"]

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